> I will also point out that the European model is not free, universal college degrees for all - access is restricted behind rigorous entrance exams

WHAT ?? Not. at. all.

I'm french and university is almost FREE (never more than 1000 euros a year and mostly around 300) for anyone with the A-level, at any age. Yeah of course there are exams like for any diploma in the entire world but there are not "super rigorous" especially at uni. There's only a "hard" exam in medecine, and normal "exams" every year (like in every program in the world) that are basically a joke for anyone qualified in these disciplines. If you want you can enroll in elite tracks, which are very hard, but they are almost free too (i paid 0 for the education, 200 a year for housing + around 60 euro per month of food).

Granted you have amphitheater with hundreds of people, but if you are motivated you'll get the education.

The most expensive school in frances are the high end economic school and some engineering school (not the best ones actually) and it's under 10k a year.

You have no idea of how much you get screwed in the US

Standard Univ courses (at least in science and economics) are way subpar compared the same degree pursued in schools or high-end universities with a competitive exam in France. Source: I did an engineering school and did one master in university.

However, I liked more the atmosphere in University.

Also, most private eng schools are crap though they're quite expensive.

So it doesn't seem that tuition have an incidence on quality, at least in France.

French universities are MUCH more competitive then programs in the US to get into (you can get into bachelors programs in the US at community college level / for-profit schools etc with almost no reading / writing or math skills or even English language skills.

Seriously - if you want to be a vet in the EU it is CRAZY competitive. You simply have no chance to get in unless you have top Abitur scores.

Everyone saying you just need a high school degree to get into a vet school or anything else is dreaming. Many of the high schools themselves are tiered schools.

> Many of the high schools are tiered

Indeed, so people don’t spend a ton of time teaching that which won’t stick no matter what.

It’s absolutely possible to tier-up if you are so inclined, but generally that involves a lot of work on your part.

My wife grew up in Montreal and paid a laughably small amount at McGill.

Yes I paid $2500/semester (CAD) for my engineering degree in Canada. Living in the Bay Area has made me appreciate my people all the more.

> Living in the Bay Area has made me appreciate my people all the more.

Not enough to still live there, apparently. Sounds like Canada is good in some respects but worse in others, like making good money in your chosen career. Every country has trade-offs, and the US’s is that a lot of safety nets aren’t there but the sky’s the limit for high achievers. Some people like it that way.

Yeah, the high achievers and connected. Fuck the rest.

20 years ago right?

Nah, graduated in 2010. My brother paid the same amount, graduated last year.

Current-year tuition fees at Carleton range from $3500CAD/semester to $5800CAD/semester [1] for domestic students. The province foots the bill for over half, probably closer to three quarters based on the international student fees. It's gone up a little but it's hardly un-manageable. Both my brother and I graduated without debt by working during the summers, and both scholarships and bursaries are available to help cover the costs -- and loans via OSAP [2].

FWIW I did mean to type $3500 in my original post, which is probably now closer to $5000.

[1] https://admissions.carleton.ca/scholarships/domestic-costs/

[2] https://www.ontario.ca/page/osap-ontario-student-assistance-...

The cost he mentions is the A average you have. If you had a C or D average you would not have made it in.

Language problem: A-level isn't an A average. The post you are replying to was written in British-compatible English and you read it in an American-compatible dialect. Think of it as a "full high school" education, as opposed to the early-leaving program for immediate employment or trade school (which in England would be a GCSE, or O-level in former times). Here in Ontario, Canada, we used to have a Grade 13 for university educattion qualification; in Quebec, one attends CEGEP between an abbreviated high school and university.

> You have no idea of how much you get screwed in the US

This is true of many issues the US faces that Europe has solved. Healthcare, education, income inequality, housing, transportation, gun violence...

Just go down down the list and it's easy to find "unsolvable American problems" that have solutions, and that we Americans are totally ignorant about or refuse to acknowledge, saying it "won't work for us".

Has Europe solved these things? I lived in France for a number of years and unemployment, especially outside of Paris is very high, the economy is in the doldrums (especially in smaller cities like Avignon,) the Maghreb continue to be treated like second class citizens, and terrorism is a very real and continual threat. Health insurance is good, but the system is running huge deficits. And gun violence? Spend a few minutes with the Marseille police and you’ll see the gangland violence is dramatic. As far as income inequality— that’s debatable. The upper classes are kept from getting too “upper,” but the lower classes still live in decaying concrete block housing. Americans also have about $14,000 more per year in disposable income compared to the French — that’s after accounting for insurance, education, etc. The very poor do better in France, but should we be optimizing society around the ultra-poor? Doing that means that everyone else is worse off and the ultra poor are still pretty poor. As far as transportation, spend some time in smaller French towns. You better hope you have a car or you aren’t going anywhere. There is also the high cost and oppressive regulation around starting a business. Entrepreneurship in France is very difficult despite the word itself being invented there. France rewards mediocrity.

The US might well be better than the EU for the top 20% of people or so, which often happen to be the ones making laws, so I can see how that would happen.

>not free, universal college degrees for all - access is restricted behind rigorous entrance exams.

As another user pointed out, US universities are also restricted in the same manner. Perhaps you're attempting to describe a difference in how they would be perceived and thus perhaps politically digestable, but college admissions is extremely competitive in the United States as well.

The bar for entry has certainly lowered/widened, likely related to financial incentives being discussed in this post.

Not for community colleges and regular universities. If you want to go to a top-tier university, sure, but there is tons of room for everyone.

Your point about entrance exams is, in general, not true. University applications in Europe are very similar to those in the USA.

What is the European version of SAT/ACT scores and AP tests?

I can only speak for the Netherlands, we have a tiered high school system, and you can enter most university programs with just a high school diploma of the highest tier.

That's known as "tracking" in the States and has a history of racial discrimination. There's little chance it will be implemented in the states.

are you talking about diploma pathways: "advanced"/"standard" diplomas and things of that nature? because that's the norm in several states.

More along the lines of everyone takes a test and the top X% are in the college prep track, the next Y% are in the 2 year community college track, and the rest are on the industrial/shop class track.

oh, interesting. I hadn't heard of that. racial disparities appear in the distribution of different degree "tiers" in states that use those systems, too, and in some the degree you get in high school determines your eligibility for some types of college funding, so it sounds like it's a similar problem potentially.

That's interesting, it seems that this shifts the entrance exam of college to earlier in a student's life (making high school entrance exams much more valuable compared to the United States.)

Yes, fwiw your high school level is determined at the end of primary school based on your teachers' recommendations and a standardized test. But there is quite some mobility possible between high school levels.

Then the high school exams just become the de facto college entry exams. It still adds all kind of wealth privilege gates to who gets free tuition at the best schools.

If that's the case, it's a privilege afforded to about 50% of each year's students (Germany, presumably it's not much different for our neighbours). For people who don't qualify due to their high school education, there are opportunities to gain access later in life, and people who did that make up about 30% of each year's university students.

Obviously, nothing is perfect.

Source: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiturientenquote_und_Studiena...

Sweden here, we have different quotas. They need to be balanced but for specialty more art based programs like architecture they might involve auditions or similar.

All programs have requirements, to take a STEM program you need to have calculus, physics and similar from high school. If you don't have it there's generally a system to study for a year to pass those courses, allowing you to change track.

The entrance is then essentially. (Checked my program)

1. 66% based on high school grades

2. 34% on a SAT/ACT like test.

The test is different though, no essays or other subjective stuff. It essentially has two parts both multiple choice, one testing language and one testing logic. Score is assigned by bell curve of all takers. Generally not as good predictor of student suitability as grades but allows people who just barely passed high school due to lack of motivation, issues at home and similar to still have a chance getting into their dream career if they are smart enough.

You can generally with really high motivation study for the test and raise your score a bit, not hugely though, and having that motivation is another predictor for success studying so works itself out.

People saying you just need a high school diploma and their are no standardized tests are misleading the issue.

There are STRICT entrance requirement - basically tied to your Abitur or similar. This means big waitlists if you are not a top scoring (on Abitur). European systems DO have exams and they can be pretty high stakes for classes. There are lots of quotas - as should be obvious given the education is free.

"The remaining places not reserved for the aforementioned advanced quota groups are filled following the Abiturbestenquote, i.e. applicants with the best higher education entrance qualification grades, and Wartezeitquote, applicants with the highest amount of accumulated wait semesters. The admission criteria within the selection process of institutions of higher education (Auswahlverfahren der Hochschulen, AdH) are set by the universities and institutions themselves according to the respective state law and their own requirements. Therefore, the AdH is not an additional application and admission procedure, but only one of several quotas."

In France there are two systems. Competitive and non competitive. Competitive is for med school and high end schools of engineering or economics / management. The entry tests are nation-wide and standardized. The non-competitive may have an entry test but non standardized. Both further tests are up to the discretion of the teachers.

There used to be public graduation rankings, but they are no more.

Ireland has a leaving certificate - 6 subjects graded and points awarded, those points are used as a gatekeeper for universities. UK has A-levels, 3 AP level subjects which gate University access.

i speak for italy, germany and france: there is no standardized testing. and thank god for that.

standardized testing is mostly a scam.

I think Americans need to be a little more discriminating about tossing around “non-profit” without qualification. Many public and private universities are essentially hedge funds with schools attached to them. This money is used to do everything from real estate speculation to handing out patronage jobs to well-connected elites (and often not to running the schools well or humanely, e.g. all the labor issues around perpetual adjuncting).

That a given university is a non-profit tells you almost nothing about whether it functions like a state-funded school in a social democracy. Many are actually quite predatory in terms of saddling students with tuition, fees, unnecessary courses, etc.

It’s a non-profit because the investments, the real estate, the patronage jobs, and the shortchanging of staff all serve the institution itself. Surplus enables it to expand or execute better on its mission. A rich dude can’t invest in the university hedge fund and then redeem for a suitcase full of cash. Only the university itself can do that, and instead of a yacht it’s going to buy a research vessel, and instead of hosting kickass parties it’s going to study fish. And if hiring the customs inspector’s son gets it out of port faster, then so be it. But overpaying for custodial services isn’t going to get the fish studied any better.

Economic inequality is an important problem but it’s not the only problem. It’s okay to sometimes accumulate and deploy funds to other ends.

Universities don’t act like specific cost centers of governments, they act like governments.

It depends, most university courses in Italy don't have a strict access exam for example, or they only do in some some universities.

I don't think there is a European standardisation on hard entrance exams and limited numbers.

>restricted behind rigorous entrance exams

I don't know which nations you're talking about, but I'm not certain that I'd call entrance exams in France "rigorous". But the entire system is different than in the US, so I guess maybe it's not comparable?

In any case, trying to get a perfect score on an SAT is way harder. Probably the whole reason an industry has popped up around increasing your score on the SAT/ACT/GRE/GMAT/MCAT etc etc etc.

It's similar. Pupils are evaluated on their last 2 years of high school. The bacalaureat (equivalent of the A level) doesn't factor in because it comes too late (July-August, after it's already decided where you will be going).

This can be very selective or not at all depending on where you're going, there are totally different tracks so it really can't be discussed in general (Law, Medicine, Engineering, Business, Art, trades, etc...). All are basically free, except business schools that are always private and super expensive.

I think that's the main difference between the US, US always have gigantic college of 30000 students that cover everything, whereas France is rather fragmented.

In Belgium, there are only entrance exams for the highest level engineering program, and some medical degrees. No entrance exams at all for anything else.

Don’t confuse “nonprofit” with “no profits”. There are plenty of people making a lot of money in nonprofits.

> universal college degrees for all - access is restricted behind rigorous entrance exams.

that's just not quite true in all major European countries I have a direct experience with.

It is true, you cannot get in without your Hochschulzugangsberechtigung (University Entrance Qualification).

Can you name a SINGLE well known major university that does not have this and allows anyone a free education? I will post the requirements here. It is not open to all by any means - their are STRICT quotas.

You are saying you cannot get into university without a high school diploma?

That seems fairly common everywhere. It seems pointless to me to give a university education to someone that’s illiterate.

You are not understanding the way free university works.

Your acceptance depends very very significantly on your performance in high school - there are strict cutoffs based on how you did on your abitur, which in turn relates to a series of high stakes exams and earlier tracking in high school (europe has tracking already in high school where entire high schools are different track).

It's not get a high school diploma and go to university for free. To be a vet, a doctor, a lawyer etc - you basically need to track into these positions VERY early. The good news, they limit the number of graduates through these screenings so the jobs on the other end tend to pay pretty well.

A lot of the posters are claiming you get to go to top universities for free to study subjects that lead to good paying jobs without even taking standardized exams etc. This is totally false.

It's actually much easier for joe blow to become a lawyer in the US then in Europe - including going to law school - including the non ABA schools EVEN if they didn't do well in high school. It does cost money though and for many the jobs don't pay what they would expect or hope for.

Seriously, I wish people would name the top universities without cutoffs - they don't exist.

In the US simply pronouncing that word would get you into some schools.

English word clusters like “Weapons of Mass Destruction” are similar to German. The way they’re written is different though. It is ‘mashed together.’

Once you get used to picking out German morphemes, it’s not hard to make things out.

> access is restricted behind rigorous entrance exams

In some countries there is no exam at all.

in most of the countries, i would say.

Very true. And what works in Europe will not work for the US because 1. No kids should be left behind, so let's dumb down the test. 2. Kids should have stress-free life and academia is for boring people, so let's dumb dow the curriculum. 3. Math is racism. STEM for sure is racism. As Seattle educator put it, why don't we teach kids aboriginal math, and tests are surely racism. So, let's get rid of entrance exam and possibly reduce course work on model civilization.

With all the progress in civil rights, charging hefty intuition is the only way to go